


The Play’s the Thing the Gentleman Requires

by FlyingPigPoet



Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [3]
Category: Gentleman Jack (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anne starts training as Old Guard, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26736895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Summary: Anne starts her training with the Old Guard, but then they find out that George Sutherland has plans for Ann Walker. The Old Guard to the rescue!
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Andromache the Scythian, Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard and Their (Good) Demons [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872979
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	1. Prologue via Voiceover

Nameless Vaguely British Dude Narrator: 

In only two hundred years, coincidental with the popularization of the historical lesbian Anne Lister, the LGBTQ+ community would have in its arsenal of self-accepted lesbian stereotypes and tropes the “sword lesbians”: lesbians who like and collect swords, often including lesbians who fence, either for theatrical purposes (think “Herlet: Butch Princess of Denmark”), or for Western-style fencing matches or Asian-style martial arts. When they discover Anne’s diaries and note where she writes of her soldier brother, Sam, teaching her to “fight with a sword… after a fashion,” they will latch onto this as a marker that she was very much like them.

They will be right. 

But they will never, ever know just how right they are.


	2. 1840s Training Montage

From Dover, the Old Guard sailed across the Channel, and then via the River Seine south for many miles to Paris. They bought horses in Paris and rode gently northeast to Goussainville, a quiet little town where they had bought a tired little church and vicarage after the French Revolution. It had been left in ruins but, over the years, they had fixed it up and made it livable again. There were four rooms that they used as bedrooms. Nicky and Joe were on the third floor under the roof. Anne was given a room next to theirs and it only took her one night to realize why the others had fled to the second floor, where presumably the noise was less…

Still, Anne found it encouraging (if annoying) to realize that these men were just as willing to accept themselves as she had always been. She knew that she had quite likely woken up her sister, Marian, once or twice since her marriage to Ann Walker. It made her more willing to be… open-minded about the noise.

Some nights, it reminded her too much of Ann. But on the nights after the days when they had been training nonstop, it wasn’t a problem at all. She slept through all of it.

Mornings were hand-to-hand combat training, which was entirely new for her. After a significant midday meal, they led her through exercises to improve her Russian and German and begin to introduce her to the Arabic script.

Late afternoons, they used wooden versions of bladed weapons of all different types to see which ones she took to. She was “rubbish” with Nicky’s straight sword and had Things To Say about Andy’s axe.

“It’s not an axe,” said Andy. “It’s a labrys. In my culture, it was a woman’s weapon. I think the name for it came from our name for the bits only women have, whereas the word for sword…”

Anne waved her hand. “Yes, I see. It’s just that my brother’s sword was straight and then curved a bit at the end. That seemed terribly useful, as does Mr. Yusef’s sword.”

Joe grinned. “You like my sword? It started in China, I have heard, the dao, the what you would call a broadsword, I think, or a scimitar. Unlike Nicky’s sword, which is built for straight lines, the dao, the scimitar, they are built to make circles, to kill at 180 degrees. Everyone surrounding you goes down and you walk away.”

Anne grinned. “I like the sound of that. Teach me, won’t you?”

Andy grunted, miffed. “The labrys works the same…”

Anne looked at the other woman, totally taken with her green eyes, her long hands. “I think,” she said judiciously, “that you will have… other skills to teach me.”

Then she threw the tired old towel over her shoulder, winked at them, and went back into the vicarage.

Andy stared after her, mouth hanging open. That had felt like the opening move to a flirtation, something Andy had not experienced in, literally, millennia.

Nicky caught Joe’s eye, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.

///

Sebastien rode his horse, Dumas, into Paris once a month to buy language books, ink and other essentials that were harder to get in Goussainville. He had grown a mustache and beard to be less identifiable and wore several layers of shirts to hide his lean, muscular frame. Anne had recommended spectacles as an additional ruse. 

She thought like that, in layers, he felt. Andy was very direct, and the medievalists the same, a function of the ages they had been born in. Anne was much more like him. They often spent hours in the evening discussing modern novelties such as steam power, while the others played chess, ignoring them completely. Andy was cautious about such “new” things, and Sebastien knew that Anne didn’t fault her for it, being cautious herself about the new looms revolutionizing the textile industry, though she mentioned casually having been told by Queen Marie of Denmark to “embrace the future.” Clearly, she was still of two minds about it.

Sebastien had read about Britain’s Tory party in the French newspapers and didn’t think much of aristocrats at the best of times. Well, he was French in 1841. Naturally he would have Opinions. But Anne was hard not to like, hard not to respect in many ways.

They had all been surprised at how quickly she had adapted to her new normal. She worked hard six days a week at the fighting drills and the language drills, and on Sundays, went for long walks alone.

Like Andy, Sebastien had given up on God, but he thought Anne was still wrestling with the vast chasm between her old life and her new one and what it all might mean. His current trip into Paris was more than just a trip for supplies. He had written to his bookseller, a British fellow named Ezra who said he could get English-language books for Sebastien, for a slight fee, and Sebastien had placed a personal order in addition to the books he bought with Andy’s money for the team: books on language and medicine, mostly, one on trains, and one on agriculture. Anne had an idea about growing their own vegetables on the edge of the cemetery. Aristocrat or not, she had no qualms about doing manual labor, though they had had to explain to her about washing her own clothes and sheets.

Well, they were all works in progress one way or another.

The sign hanging above the shop declared: Ezra Fell, Bookseller. A bell dinged as he entered the shop.

The man behind the desk was British, blond, and rather a dandy, but he recognized Sebastien immediately. “Ah, Monsieur Liffner, so very good to see you. I have just the thing you were asking for. It arrived yesterday in the morning post!” He rubbed his hands together, obviously delighted. 

Sebastien waited while Fell brought out the book and handed it to him for inspection. Sebastien flipped through the pages, enjoying the new book smell. The cost was minimal, considering it had come from London, but he also thought that it would bring outsized value to the team in comparison to the cost that he was paying personally.

Fell wrapped it in cloth, accepted the Frenchman’s banknotes, saying, “I hope your friend is well?” Once Sebastien had brought Joe with him, when he had needed extra hands to carry their supplies.

“Oh, he’s fine, merci. Pardonne, but I must be getting on with things.”

“Of course, of course! Have a splendid day!”

Sebastien left, shaking his head. He didn’t have to be six thousand years old to be wearied by some people’s energy.

///

Late in the afternoon, Anne had gotten a headache from all the reading and had gone to lie down on the sofa in the sitting room, but a while later she woke from a doze to the heady smell of spices and her mouth watered. She got up and wandered into the kitchen, still amazed at how much easier walking around furniture was in trousers rather than a skirt and multiple petticoats.

In the kitchen, she found Nicky and Joe. Nicky was playing a flute rather badly. Joe was chopping vegetables for a stewpot that hung over the fire. Her senses battled each other, but in this case, her nose lost to her ears. 

“Mister—”

“I told you to call me Nicky.”

“Fine, then. Nicky. Your form is poor, and that is why you are sounding wrong notes. May I?”

Nicky looked surprised, probably, Anne thought, because the flute was generally considered a man’s instrument, for what she thought of as vulgar but obvious reasons. The knight handed her his flute.

She wiped off the embouchure with her sleeve, blew a C note, adjusted the parts, and launched into a song, very basic but completely in key. She handed it back to him. “It’s all in the elbows,” she said. She then turned her attention to Joe. “That smells heavenly. What are those spices?”

“Cumin, coriander, turmeric, some white pepper. When I am homesick for my country, I cook our people’s cuisine. Nicky and I take turns cooking. Andy’s rubbish at it.”

“Hm. I imagine I would be too. I look forward to tasting it, then.”

Joe picked up a small, narrow spoon and dipped it into the pot, took some of the liquid, blew on it lightly and offered it to Anne, who took it in her mouth. Her eyes went wide as she pulled the spoon out of her mouth and stared at it. She frowned and they watched her as she worked to disentangle the flavors that were happening on her tongue.

“That is. I. You—”

Joe grinned. “You like?”

“Spectacular!”

Joe turned to Nicky and rubbed his fingers together. Nicky dug in his pocket for some coins and gave them to him, sighing.

“Do you all bet on everyday things?”

Joe shrugged. “It keeps things interesting.”

“What did you bet in this case?”

Nicky said, “During the Crusades, we knew many Englishmen. They did not care for spicy foods, even Italian foods.” He looked shocked that such a thing was possible.

Anne nodded. “My people are averse to travel, or at least to letting travel actually broaden them. But we’re not living, are we, if we don’t take the odd risk now and then?”

Joe said, “I will not bet against you loving Nicky’s food.”

“Oh, I adore Italian food. I spent some time in Rome during the festival at Easter…” Suddenly the enthusiasm drained out of her voice, as recalled the people she had traveled with, women she would never see again.

Nicky patted her on the shoulder. “It will be like that for a long time. When you want to talk about it, we are here. When you want to be alone, just tell us to go away or leave you alone.”

Anne looked up at the wooden ceiling, willing tears to stay behind her eyes. “Yes. Well, thank you. I— I should have another go at my German past perfect…” And she marched out of the kitchen.

///

Andy had a very refined sense of smell and an uncanny knowledge of just when dinner was about to be served. She arrived in the dining room just as Nicky was putting silverware on the table and Joe was bringing out serving dishes. “Where’s Sebastien?”

“Not back yet.”

She frowned, but just then, the front door opened, and Sebastien entered with his knapsack on his back, carrying his saddlebags in front of him with a big grin. Anne came down the stairs. “Ah, Monsieur, welcome back.”

His grin got bigger.

Andy said, “You got a deal on ink? You got laid? What?”

From his saddlebag, he pulled a thick rectangle wrapped in linen and handed it to Anne. “Happy Birthday, mademoiselle.”

“But it’s not my—” said Anne, flustered.

“No, but we were in northern England when you happened to mention your birthday and we had nothing. And it took me a while to think what you might like. Go on, open it.”

Frowning, Anne unfolded the linen wrapping, dropped it on the table, and opened the book. Immediately, she burst into tears. Her mouth opened and closed. Then she shouted, “Book!” and launched herself at Sebastien and enfolded in him in a huge, highly unexpected hug.

Shocked, he patted her on the back lightly until she pulled away, visibly fighting to pull herself together.

Wryly, Andy said, “Well, I’ve been trying to come up with a good nickname for you for a few decades. Book works. Now let’s eat dinner.”

///

Nicky didn’t quite know what to make of Anne Lister. Having lived with Andy and Quynh for a few centuries, he was used to women who did manly things for a living, but that wasn’t like this. Anne seemed genuinely masculine in ways that he and Joe weren’t exactly. He couldn’t place it, didn’t have a word for it.

Part of it was the way she would give her opinions with absolutely no signs of self-doubt. It was like reading the newspaper: everything was Factual, Organized, and often phrased like a headline: This True Thing Happened.

Part of it was the big, English gestures. Unlike his own family, her gestures got big when she was arguing with logic, not emotion. Actually, she rarely seemed to express emotions other than intellectual fascination. The hug had surprised them, Sebastien most of all, though Nicky thought the enigmatic Frenchman had been touched.

But then there were other things. Even after she had elected to study with Joe, essentially dismissing his and Andy’s weapons, she had made it a point to mention that a longsword required more upper body strength than most women had. She had mentioned to Andy that she thought her own cultural association with axes as farm tools made her predisposed to underestimate its power as a weapon of war. One moment, she acted like she didn’t care what other people thought of her, and then the next, it was clear that she actually did.

On Sunday morning, he headed out to a small knoll not far from the vicarage, where a few large rocks made for good seats if one wanted to be alone and think long thoughts or say long prayers. He carried the rosary he had recently bought to replace the one he had worn out. It wasn’t a form of meditation used during the Crusades, but it was one that he, like many, had started using since the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Mary had been with them then. He could use a little guidance now.

But when he got there, he found Anne with her new book. She looked flustered and he apologized for intruding. He lifted his rosary, “I just like to pray on the Sabbath.”

“Stay then. I mean, you’re a Papist, but we can’t help how we’re made.”

He gestured to her book. “Are you reading science?”

“No, no. It’s the Book of Common Prayer, in English. I’m Church of England, of course, and I have a few psalms and prayers memorized, naturally, but it is a relief to be able to say the office on Sundays. Monsieur Le Livre was very kind to think of it.”

“He has layers, that one. And I think he likes his new nickname, though so far only Andy is using it.”

Anne smiled. “Stay? Perhaps, of a Sunday, we might pray together?”

He nodded. “I’d like that very much.”


	3. A Little Light Med-Evac, Avec…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on real historical events.

It took a bit longer than a year, but then Joe and Andy agreed that Anne was ready to travel and fight with them. The beautiful thing about their situation was that if she fucked up, there was little chance it would end up with permanent consequences, so it made sense to give her an opportunity to test her skills.

Andy had received a letter from an old gunsmith in Paris that had made her frown and take long walks with Joe and Nicky, with all of them gesturing violently.

Anne turned to Sebastien, “Well, Book. What do you think?”

He snorted. “We’ll be going back to work soon. Now explain to me about arterial bleeding again?”

“I don’t understand why she is having you all learn this. Don’t we simply heal?”

“Sure, we do,” said Book. “But civilians and other potential bystanders really don’t. And if we need to put ourselves between them and the danger, it would be nice to be more than a human meat shield. Then if we can stop somebody’s bleeding, die, and come back a few minutes later, they won’t have bled out, so it won’t be for nothing.”

“Ah. Right. So the difference between veins and arteries is the direction and the volume…”

///

Joe and Book went into Paris together again. Joe picked up ammunition and medical supplies. Book went to visit Mr. Fell, Bookseller.

The blond man was thrilled to see him. “What can I get for you today, my friend? Theology? Geology?”

“Your most up-to-date medical book. Also, have you heard about those new-fangled volley guns? Infernal things. Might you have anything on that?”

“I’ve seen a tract about outlawing them, but nothing in book form. They’ve only been around since, oh, the revolution, maybe sixty years? They’re still too new. But! I do have a lovely book on anatomy and on what this one new author, A. Crowley, is calling ‘war medicine.’ Would that help?”

“Absolutely.”

///

On May 5, 1842, the Old Guard traveled southwest through Paris towards Versailles. They rode for a day and a half, stopping in Meudon to settle their conflicting ideas on how to stop the assassination attempt on King Louis Philippe. An old friend of Andy’s from the bloodiest days after the revolution had written to tell her that there was someone looking into building a volley gun, a combination of rifles that could fire together or in succession. It sounded like a thing of the devil. Andy had given up on the idea of a god or gods a few thousand years ago, but she was pretty sure the devil was still in business. 

She didn’t much care for the current king, gave him maybe ten years before he was ousted. That was just French politics of the time. But assassinations led to political unrest, which led to wars, and she was not in the mood for a war. So she had decided that they would intervene if they could. It would be a good way to test Anne Lister’s mettle.

They had two days to hash it out. Sunday the 8th was the day scheduled to honor the king at Versailles with fireworks and waterworks. They had camped out near the train station, intending to take the train in toward the scheduled festivities, but then a wild boar had raced into their encampment, grabbed the bag with their food and raced off into the forest. They spent half the day chasing him, with Andy lamenting no longer carrying a bow as a standard piece of equipment. Eventually, Anne had thrown herself on the animal, and gotten gored for her trouble, but when she came back to life, she found that they had rescued the food. They stumbled back to camp just in time to see a fireball erupt from the train tracks.

They grabbed their knapsacks with the medical equipment and ran as fast as they could. Seventeen train carriages and three engines, two in the front and one in the rear, had collided. The front engine’s hotbox had sprayed, and the carriages had accordioned.

Book paled, his mouth agape. “They lock the people in.”

No one knew what he was talking about until they got there and fought through the fire to hack at the locked doors of the carriages, suffering serious burns. Anne grabbed her newly-forged dao, and used its hilt to smash at the windows and used her gloved hands to pull out the broken glass and help people out of the cars to safety.

They worked for half an hour before the second train erupted. Then, they knew no more.

///

Anne had only done this three times before, so she took the longest to wake, heal, rise. The others had pulled her out of the flames and carried her into the woods. There they set her down and waited.

The whole thing was surreal. She could feel pain everywhere in her body, and when the sharp pain was replaced by dull pain, and the dull pain by ache and itch, she raised her head and said, “Did we do it? Did we help?”

That was when she realized that her head was cradled in Andy’s lap. They were all bloody but whole. Andy was crying. Andy had not seemed to Anne to be the type of woman to cry. It shocked her. “Did we lose someone?”

“No,” said Andy sniffling. “But you took… so long… to come back…”

Anne had the urge to comfort her. “Well. I’m British. When I do a thing, I like to do it very thoroughly.”

Nicky added, “And then there’s a pot of tea.”

Andy’s laugh came out like half a sob.

Anne said, “Tea? Well, obviously. I’m ready for a brew up if you are.”

Joe pulled her to her feet and hugged her. “My student passed her exam. Well done, Anne!”

Anne looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

Nicky came and took his turn hugging her. “He means when you needed to die, you died, and when you needed to do something practical, you did that.” He gestured to Joe. “It took us decades to figure out the difference.”

Andy rolled her eyes. “Yeah. It really did.”

Book said, “They’ve cleared the survivors. We should clean up and go home.”

Anne stood there, very tired. It took a toll on you, the first dozen times, they had told her. She looked past Joe’s shoulder to the green hills, murmuring, “I lift my eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help.”

Nicky put her arm over his shoulders and started walking with her after Booker, while Joe and Andy took the rear. He said, “My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

Anne gripped him tightly. Her arm was still stiff and covered with dried blood. “He will not suffer thy foot to be moved; he that keepeth thee will not slumber…”

Nicky let her put all her weight on him. “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.”

By the time they got to their small encampment in the woods, the moon had risen and was close to full, but Anne did not feel smited in the least.


	4. Romantic Interlude

Andy looked down from her window on the second floor and saw Anne Lister pacing back and forth in the graveyard, somberly noting names and dates, or at least that was what it looked like. Andy didn’t remember much from her early years as an immortal, but she did remember communing with the dead, questioning the most basic facts of existence. She remembered being scared.

It had taken Quynh and her decades to find each other, and by the time they had, they had both come to terms with their immortality. Lykon was new and confused. The Crusaders had each other. Sebastien had been a wreck. It took people differently.

Anne was, in turns, absolutely fine with her lot in what was likely to be a very, very long life, and an utter mess, though she fought to hide it from them. Andy had thought that Nicky and Joe saw most of it. Then ha! Book had gone and gotten Anne a Book of Common Prayer in English and the woman had practically broken down in front of them. Andy always underestimated the power of religion and superstition in people’s lives. Maybe that was why they had each other, to make up for each other’s weaknesses and inabilities to see what was obvious.

Standing in the graveyard, Anne rubbed the back of her neck and then turned and looked around. Then her eyes rose to Andy’s window and met Andy’s eyes, and the tension in her shoulders eased. One eyebrow rose, followed by a small smile. Andy thought she should turn away, but there was something magnetic about the woman, something that made her feel warm in ways she had not felt in several decades. She smiled and nodded her head. Anne took a breath and hurried into the vicarage.

Andy heard the quick steps coming up the stairs. She went and opened her door, to come face to face with Anne, whose pupils were wide and dark. 

Anne ran a hand over her cravat. She murmured, “You’re… not my usual type…”

Andy reached up and took Anne’s face in her hands. “You don’t like older women?”

“Mm. Not as a rule, no.”

“But I’ve often noticed you looking at my fingers. Like you are imagining what I might do with them…”

“Ah.” Anne blushed.

“And you’ve got to have thought about it, you up there in that attic, having to listen to the boys going at it.”

“Ah, well. They do go on a bit.”

“And it’s been a while for you. That must be trying.” Andy ran a finger down Anne’s jaw, to her shoulder and down one arm. Anne shuddered. 

Andy gave her a little smirk, leaned in and kissed her. Anne started like she’d felt a small shock, but then she grabbed Andy’s muscled arms and pulled her close. Andy pushed her up against the door frame and it was like they were pushing each other for dominance, when there were footsteps up the stairs and a small surprised grunt.

They pulled away from each other, gasping. Sebastien stood on the top step holding the post in his hand. “You’ve a letter from your gunmaker friend, Boss. And Nicky picked up the paper in town.” He handed Andy the letter and the newspaper to Anne.

Andy opened the letter, read it and hissed. 

Anne scanned the front page of the paper. “Oh, what fresh level of idiocy! Britain is considering making it illegal for women and children to work in mines. As if men could fit in those small spaces. And the cost will increase, since the men will want paying more.” She smacked the paper against her hand and hurried down the stairs.

Sebastien frowned. “She… wants children working in mines?”

Andy sighed tiredly. “Yes, well, three thousand years ago, I sold the people I defeated in battle as slaves. We all start where we are.”

“And you and she…?”

“I don’t know, Book. I’ve been lonely for far longer than you’ve been alive. She’s… like me.”

“Sapphic, Nicky says… after that Greek poet.”

“Yeah, I actually met Sappho. She said I was too masculine for her.” She sighed. “Good poetry, though.”

Sebastien gestured at the letter. “What news?”

“The fellow who was asking about those infernal guns was back. The king’s not out of danger yet.”

“We can only do so much, Boss.”

“Don’t I know it.”

///

Down in the kitchen, Joe and Nicky were preparing to cook. Joe put a linen sack on the table and Nicky pulled two nutcrackers from a drawer. One was made of metal, just two rods hinged at one end, but the other was carved out of wood in the shape of a dog’s head, with dark glass eyes.

When Anne came into the room, Joe was quickly snapping walnuts open and throwing the meat into a bowl on the table and the shell fragments into a metal pail at his feet. Nicky was slower. Joe said, “Mi amore, does your hand still hurt?”

“Just stiff. Andy has a hard head.”

Anne reached for the wooden nutcracker and he gave it to her. She shooed him out of his chair and took his place. “I might as well make myself useful,” she said. 

Nicky shifted to the counter, where he had a bowl and a jug of cream. He pulled out measuring spoons and a wedge of cheese wrapped in waxed cloth.

“What are you making?” asked Anne.

Joe grinned. “A Genoese classic, it’s a creamy walnut sauce. You will love it.”

Nicky smiled shyly. “It’s one of his favorites. When we bought this place originally, he was most excited about the walnut trees.”

“One of the joys of traveling, I’ve often thought,” said Anne, “is trying out new foods.” She stared off into space, frowning for a moment. Her eyes were sad.

Nicky patted her on the shoulder. “Food brings back the memories, no? Of the people we loved. So we remember and we are sad. And one day you will not remember so clearly, or at all, and you will be sad again. We are only human.”

“But are we?” asked Anne as she snapped open a nut.

“Human enough,” said Joe. “For a while, back before she found Quynh, Andromache’s people thought she was a god, and she assumed they were right. But then she grew tired of it and she left them. We were not made to be gods, to be alone.”

“And you two have each other.”

“Yes, and we have seen the way you look at Andy sometimes, when you think she is not looking. You do not have to be as alone as you are.”

Anne sighed. “I think I’ve always been alone. All of the women I have chased notwithstanding. I think I have very rarely had friends. Lovers, yes, of course. Women I chased or who chased me. My sister and I don’t always get along. There’s too many years between us and she has never cared for study as I have. Only Sam, my brother. If he had lived… But he died, drowned in a river in Ireland, not even in battle, as he might have wished. He taught me the little I knew about fighting with a sword. I taught him how to shoot straight. But friends… No.”

“No women, you say, but what about men?” asked Nicky.

Anne snorted. “Find me a man who believes a woman can be his equal or his better. Steph, perhaps, my… ex-lover’s brother. And I respect my land steward, but he works for me. Friendship requires equality, I’d think. And I have never met my equal.”

She said it plainly, not as a boast. Nicky and Joe exchanged looks. Joe said, “I imagine that’s true.”

“But Andy now… Is she really that old?”

“As far as we know. She says she doesn’t remember, and it’s probably true. Even in our time, people in different lands measured the years differently from each other. And her people had no written language, so it’s not like she could write things down to help her remember.”

Anne shuddered. “I would have perished long since without my journal. And I miss my thermometer.”

Again, Nicky and Joe glanced at each other. Anne was prone to non sequiturs. They were almost used to it by now.

Almost.

Nicky said, “I would like to be your friend, Anne Lister.” He held out his hand.

Looking surprised and a little touched, Anne extended her own hand and they shook. 

Joe extended his hand. “And I.”

She shook his hand. “Gentlemen, I—”

Andy walked into the room. They froze. She was frowning, and that was never good. 

Joe flicked his eyes at Nicky, then back at Anne. “Boss, you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay. But I thought today was baked cod. I’m not smelling cod.”

Nicky blinked. “Yeah, the cod… definitely smelled. The ice melted in the ice box. We’re going with pasta and walnut sauce.”

Andy’s eyes shifted to the pile of walnuts on the table, the shells in the pail on the floor. She glanced over to Anne’s hands, fiddling with the dog-shaped nutcracker. “Hm. You got her to do servants’ work? I’m amazed. Fine. Carry on.” She left.

Nicky caught the hurt in Anne’s eyes, followed by a small nod that seemed to acknowledge that Andy wasn’t totally wrong about her. “Anne, she has seen just about everything. Us? You? Even Book. We’re all new to her.”

“What do you mean?” asked Anne, picking up a nut and cracking it.

“She has seen religion tear continents asunder. Yet Nicky and I are together. Sure, in the beginning, we killed each other a dozen times for ideological reasons, but still. You are an aristocrat who is down in the scullery with us poor slobs, helping us with the servants’ work. Booker is a criminal who has a library in his room that your fellow aristocrats would drool over.”

Joe nodded. “She has seen humankind be very consistent for the first four thousand or so years of her life. Then that Buddha fellow and that Jesus fellow and that Mohammed fellow came along. Then we came along. We are not… what she expected of humans.”

Nicky picked up the bowl of walnut meat and began crushing it with his fingers. “He’s right. We defy her expectations, and that makes her question herself.”

“But surely that’s a good thing?” asked Anne.

“For us, for the world, sure, yes. For her? She’s going to need a little time to adjust.”


	5. Disturbing News

Alistair Crowley had really enjoyed the eighteenth century. The revolutions had been glorious bloodbaths, and sowing fear and dissension had been a snap. He gave his counterpart on the other side respect for the accomplishments of the Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, because, sure he was a demon, but he recognized good work when he saw it. But once the nineteenth century dawned, he took to his bed in a small mansion in the south of France and slept for ten years.

When he woke, he went down to the local pub and gambled with the locals, winning just enough to stroke his own ego, but not enough that they had major losses or, you know, tried to run him out of town. More importantly, they told him about Napoleon Bonaparte, who had successfully taken over France right before Crowley had taken to his bed, and now was poised to send his massive Grand Armee into Russia.

Crowley immediately saw how that would turn out, so he took the opportunity to volunteer to provide Napoleon’s Quartermaster with four million buttons for the army’s uniform coats, at cost. Just doing his part for La Patrie en dangeur.

The fact that the buttons had been tin, a metal that turns to dust in extreme cold temperatures, thus ensuring that Napoleon’s army could not in fact take over Russia, he considered a tragic oversight. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

With the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen, and the conveniently accidental salvation of the Russian nation, Crowley went back to bed. He and his counterpart had been helping each other out with odd jobs for thousands of years. He was very good at multi-tasking, but then, afterwards, he always needed a nap.

///

In the 1820s, Ezra Fell, Bookseller had his shop in London, and anyone who knew about books, knew about his shop. He felt he had three main clientele: people in power, to whom he sold his books at quite high prices; people in business, to whom he sold his books according to their income level; and people in need, to whom he sold his books at discount prices. Overwhelmingly, most of his clients were men.

In 1828, a woman walked in, setting off the bell on his front door and setting his angelic senses tingling. Her aura was bright with energy and intelligence and her clothing suggested that she was a thrifty lower-level aristocrat. Clearly, either she carefully mended her own clothes or someone else did it for her. She wore all black, which itself was odd for a woman of the times. He was intrigued.

“Good morning,” he said. “How may I help you?”

“Mm. Yes. I am looking for some books on anatomy and landscaping. I have a list.”

She handed him a scrap of paper with seven titles, four of which he had and two of which he knew where to get. He said, “I can’t help you with the last one. It’s been out of print for years. But the rest I can get for you by tomorrow, if you’d like to come back?”

He named a price. She paled but nodded.

The following day, she returned and examined the stack of books, looking quite excited. He liked her immediately and said carelessly, “Oh, and that last one I was only able to get in a fairly bad condition, so I’ll give it to you for half off.”

She clearly was fighting not to grin. “Mm. Excellent. Thank you.”

He gave her his card. “Ezra Fell. Should you have need of other texts, write to me. Are you local to London?”

“Mm. No, Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax.”

The bell rang again as she hurried out.

Anne Lister. He would remember that name.

///

It was 1840 when Crowley heard from his counterpart from the other side again. The man was pounding on the front door of the mansion, too polite to simply apparate into Crowley’s bed chamber. Or too something, anyway.

“Come on in, Angel. I’m, well, not decent, per se, but—”

“Yes, yes, yes, Crowley. That was hysterical for the first three thousand years. Stop joking around. You need to look at this!” He waved his rumpled copy of The Halifax Guardian in Crowley’s face.

The demon took the newspaper and read, “We are informed that the remains of this distinguished lady have been embalmed, and that her friend and companion, Miss Walker, is bringing them home by way of Constantinople, for interment in the family vault.”

“But that’s not possible!” yelled Aziraphale, tearing at his hair.

“A human died. They do that, you know,” Crowley said helpfully.

“No, they fucking well don’t!” yelled Aziraphale. Immediately, he slapped his hand against his mouth. His eyes scanned the ceiling worriedly.

Crowley sat down on his bed, his black nightshirt having changed itself into a black suit of the period, complete with black silk cravat and a silver death’s head stickpin.

“Explain,” he sighed.

“You know that the Other One has… people.”

“Not—”

“Yes, Him. He uses them for his own ends. Not your people’s ends and not mine. They are human and they are immortal, for a given value of, well, im.”

Crowley rubbed his eyes. “I thought that was an urban legend.”

“Yes, yes, I thought so too. But one of my witchfinders, about ninety years ago, he swore a blue streak that there were two women who, when they killed them, didn’t die. Or didn’t stay dead. He was unclear on that part. Too much rum. I… looked into it. There was evidence for both yes-they-exist and no-they-don’t. In retrospect, I think He was protecting them, muddying the evidence. But about twelve years ago, I met this woman Anne Lister. She was completely mortal then, but I had a feeling, as you do.”

Crowley nodded. He’d had a feeling about Bonaparte. You learned to trust your instincts.

“She was… different. A woman, gifted with intellect and fervor and passion.”

Bored, Crowley asked, “A passion for learning?”

“Er, no. Um, rather more like what you and I…”

That perked Crowley up. “A female Sodomite? So, an atheist?”

“Yes! No! Church of England. Very devout. I’ve sold her quite a few books of sermons over the years, and a particularly fine copy of The Book of Common--”

“Your point, Angel? I’m assuming you do have one.”

“She’s one of His people. So she can’t be dead, by definition. But if they embalm a living body—”

Crowley nodded. He had seen that happen before. It was bad, even for him. “But isn’t the story that His people know when one of them… awakes? Is that the word?”

“Don’t know the word, but yes, they apparently dream about each other, but sometimes it can take them centuries to find each other. We have to help her.”

“But helping her means helping… Him.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath and sat down on the bed next to Crowley. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.

Finally, he said, “You remember that yin/yang symbol? We are the commas, you and I, and our people. He is the dots. He is both of the dots. She needs us to help Him. And I think the world needs us to help her. So…”

Crowley considered this. “All right. I’m in. After all, I can always make an argument with my people for helping Him. It’s a no-brainer Downstairs. But can you?”

“My people always say that the mercy of the Grim Reaper is a very sharp scythe.”

“Ah. Right. So where do we go?”

“Scythia. Wait, no! The Ukraine, I think? Blessed geography, always changing the names of things!”

///

The Old Guard reached Tblisi on August 11, and in their dreams, they saw the brunette fall ill and the blonde tend her tearfully. They saw the manservant do his best to help, carrying water from a nearby well, finding them food. A regiment had passed through the city just prior to their arrival, so there were no fresh horses to be had. They took rooms in a small, rundown hotel that had a stable in better shape and took the opportunity to rest the horses and themselves and refresh their provisions. Three weeks later, they headed west-north-west for Kutaisi.

As they rode, they saw more signs of unrest, groups of soldiers on the road, headed south looking healthy and battle-ready, and other groups of soldiers heading north looking ill and battle-weary. They did their best to avoid drawing attention. Two weeks later, they arrived in Kutaisi. It took them the better part of the day to find an inn that wasn’t either full of sick travelers or ruinously expensive. 

Andromache found a tavern where the Cossacks drank and made friends by speaking their language. They told tales of the English ladies with wide eyes, and Andromache learned that the women were named Anne Lister and Ann Walker. According to them, Miss Walker was “just a woman, a city aristocrat,” but Miss Lister was… something else. The women had argued about their itinerary, and Miss Lister had been adamant about the opportunity to see the Black Sea. The town of Zugdidi had been mentioned. 

The Cossack sighed deeply. “I do hope they did not go there. They’ve had an outbreak of the hot fever there, I heard yesterday. I think that Miss Walker would not survive it. She seemed delicate.”

Andromache paid for their vodka, thanked him for his help, and went back to meet the men. As she told them, “I know that area of old. It’s swampy, a bad place for bugs and disease. And it’s going to take us at least three days of riding to get there. Get some sleep. We’ll leave in the morning.”

///

Crowley and Aziraphale left the tavern, feeling odd in their Cossack clothing, but Aziraphale was worried. “You know we’re not allowed to travel back in time!”

“Well, did you see another option? Besides, we’ve been alive for thousands of years and we never did it before today. So technically, it’s a first offense.”

“Oh, I hope you’re right…”


	6. Preparing for an Intervention

The days passed. Six days a week they trained together by day. In the evenings, they ate, played games of chance or chatted. Often, Anne excused herself early and went off to her room to record in her journal the date, temperature, how long it took her to “incur a cross” thinking about Andy, and all the things she had learned or thought about that day.

She was growing visibly more muscular, which at first distressed her. Then, while they were trying to clear a space behind the vicarage for a vegetable garden, they had a day of blistering heat. Anne was sagging in her linen shift, shirt, cravat and tired linen waistcoat. Finally, she went back into the vicarage and standing there in the kitchen stripped down to the shift, which was soaking wet, tore it off and put her linen waistcoat on instead. Just then Andy walked in and stopped dead.

“Oh!” she said.

“What? It’s bloody hot.”

“Yes,” said Andy, pupils dilating. “Yes. It is.”

“The work has got to be done, but it is one hundred degrees in the shade.”

“Yes. So I imagine…”

“What?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen your arms recently… They are… magnificent…”

“Ah. Um. Well.”

Andy pulled herself together. “But as you say, the work needs to be done. And I need to, um, I need. Yes. So I’ll just.” She turned on her heel and went back upstairs. 

Anne shook her head. Bizarre.

But after that, she didn’t mind so much about her muscles.

///

It was the Book of Common Prayer in English that had clued Aziraphale in. The moment he had first met M. Liffre and his Saracen friend, he had realized that these two worked for Him. Not Crowley’s Him. Not his own Him. That other Him, the one who rode the middle line. But he did not immediately put them together with the Immortal Warrior whom he and Crowley had met in the Cossack bar a while back.

He was impressed. Aziraphale could smell an atheist a mile off. M. Liffre had that scent. Aziraphale had done a little research of the angelic kind and found that Sebastien Le Livre had been hung for deserting Bonaparte’s Grand Armee in 1812. No wonder he had changed his name.

And the fact that this die-hard (literally) atheist looked all soft and hopeful as he ordered a prayerbook for someone he barely knew said a lot about the person he was buying it for. But then, Aziraphale had met Anne Lister. She was quite capable of inspiring… feelings in people.

Aziraphale smiled at the irony. Saint Sebastien had been a martyr of the early Christian church, a good man notoriously hard to kill. Arrows didn’t do it. Eventually clubs did. After his death, he protected people from plague. Well, to be honest, Aziraphale had helped. Everybody needed a hand now and then.

Apparently, the good saint was still looking after his namesake.

That was just nice. Aziraphale knew that Crowley wouldn’t appreciate the irony, because, well, demon. But it warmed the angel’s heart knowing that even when the angels weren’t around to lend a hand, the slogan “saints preserve us” still meant something, Enlightenment or not.

///

August turned to September. Fall came and went. In late November, the garden they had laid out was fallow except for a few turnips and potatoes. They trained less, not because it was cold, but because it got dark earlier. They might be immortal, but even they couldn’t see in the dark.

Wednesday night at dinner (roast chicken and potatoes, with tiny carrots that had sprouted in their midden), Anne had gone all Saint Theodoros on the topic of soil acidity and how that affected agriculture. Booker and Joe had gotten glassy-eyed. Andy was mesmerized. Nicky had a job of work, trying desperately not to laugh at the lovelorn six-thousand-year old warrior practically drooling over the young British aristocrat.

The next day, Nicky had asked Booker if he could find a book on the soil acidity for Anne, just in case her opinions were, well, under-informed. Booker laughed.

“What? It’s a very reasonable thing!”

“Oh, yes. No question.” Booker lowered his voice. “It’s just that Andy asked me to find some good British pastoral poetry. Everyone wants to give Anne something to read.” He winked.

The following day, Booker rode into Paris and visited Ezra Fell, Bookseller, who was, characteristically, delighted to see him.

“Monsieur Liffre! What can I do for you today?”

Booker shrugged and handed Fell his short list.

Fell beamed. “The breadth of your reading is inspiring, Monsieur! Hm, I have just the thing.”

He popped into his backroom and popped back with a small stack. “Edmund Spencer is your man for pastoral poetry. The rest are much more recent, of course, being, scientific musings. Also, the books on the Crusades, the Scott novels and the Arabic texts… Scott was easy, and it will be less expensive than I had predicted. That’s the good news.”

Booker sighed. He was used to bad news coming with any meal like salt.

“Right,” said Fell. “I won’t able to find a translation of Ibn Munquidh for love or money. Sorry. But for Ibn Shaddad, there are no translations in Italian. I only have German and French. And they’re both a little steep.”

Booker grunted and held out his hands. Fell handed him the German translation, which was passable, but not at that price. The French was also passable but cheaper. “I’ll take the French.”

“As you say, Monsieur. Shall I wrap them together?”

“Yeah, no. The Scotts together. The rest separately, if you don’t mind. Merci.”

Fell wrapped the books as requested and took Booker’s banknotes, giving him back the change.

Booker rode back to Goussainville, his saddlebags filled with books, his backpack filled with sweetmeats, penny candy, and other fripperies. Christmas was coming. He didn’t have to believe in God anymore to believe that even immortal warriors needed to have some fun now and then.

///

It had been like a lightning strike to his angelic brain, and Aziraphale had learned long since not to ignore such direct interventions. The book on the current thought about the treatment for mental health problems, especially those in women, by “Andre Glisser,” conveniently the same writer who had penned the book on war medicine by A. Crowley, had been slipped between the other books without a thought, the Hand of God doing what, every few decades or centuries, it did: butting in.

Would it help? Heaven only knew (literally). Humans were inscrutable. Would it help in time? Probably. If anybody was more inscrutable than humans, it was God.

///

Christmas was an odd time for the Old Guard.

On the one hand, Andromache and Booker were atheists and Joe was Muslim. Only Nicky, the Catholic, and Anne, the Anglican, believed. And yet…

Andromache had been in Jerusalem when Jesus of Nazareth had been born. She had been looking for Lykon and had thought the Magi might know of his whereabouts. She had been wrong about that, but she had seen their reaction to the poor couple in the manger, and the shepherds who had left their sheep to do what? Hold a baby shower?

Two millennia later, she still couldn’t explain what she had experienced.

Joe just knew he loved Nicky. So he roasted a goose and potatoes and carrots and made an English plum pudding for Anne.

Booker pretty much spent such holidays getting as boozed up as he could so he could sleep through them. But he had made sure to get the books and treats that everyone had quietly asked him for in the previous weeks, so that everyone had presents. Well, they were his friends, right? It was the least he could do.

And Christmas night, when they were all full of goose and potatoes and sweets, they each unwrapped their books:

Scott’s two Crusades novels from Joe to Nicky.

Ibn Shaddad’s record of the Crusades from the Islamic point of view from Nicky to Joe.

Spenser’s pastoral poetry from Andy to Anne.

A stickpin in the shape of Andy’s labrys from Anne to Andy.

Penny candy for everyone from Booker.

Baklava from all over Europe from everyone to Andy. (She actually squealed, and then immediately looked supremely embarrassed, so no one ever said anything about it. Not ever.)

Different colors of ink from everyone to Anne.

A new set of carving knives from Anne to Andy and Joe.

For Booker, from Anne, a journal, which she had divided into categories and listed the books he currently owned, leaving space for him to make notes about them. It was meticulous and bizarre in its own way (why would he make notes about his books?) but also sweet. It was an acknowledgment that the two of them were… different from the others. And similar to each other. He hugged her.

And Booker didn’t, as a rule, hug many people.

Andy had sourced the seeds of Asian and Arabic herbs for Nicky and Joe. She shrugged off their enthusiastic thanks with mutterings of “enlightened self-interest,” but nobody believed her.

By midnight on Christmas day, they were all a little soused and a little touched. As Nicky murmured to Anne as they were all heading up to their rooms, “Christmas isn’t so much about Christ, I think. It’s about the people he lived and died for.”

Anne hugged him and they went off to their separate rooms on the third floor.

Anne was just drunk enough that she knew she wouldn’t hear whatever the boys got up to that night, and she also wouldn’t think about the women she had loved, especially not Mrs. Barlow or Marianna or Vere or Anne Walker…

Surely.


	7. Staging an Intervention

Alistair Crowley tried to sleep through 1843, but his Master’s minions kept waking him up. Mostly, they were concerned with exacerbating the revolution in Hungary. Personally, Crowley couldn’t be bothered, but he woke up enough to give the sub-demons the basics of stirring up crowds to riot and stirring up the oppressors to quash riots and protests as violently as possible. And then he went back to bed.

But then the one person who could consistently and persuasively get his attention had called: a certain persistent bookseller who had over the years been located in Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, London, Halifax, and Paris. 

He had tried to convince Crowley that they should set up shop in the New World, since that was “where the action was” (whatever that meant). But they had spent a memorable few years in the early 1600s in the Boston/Salem area. A lot of people had been killed for witchcraft. A lot of people had seen the error of their ways. From the points of view of their bosses, it had largely been a wash. (And in a few hundred years, they might have shared a high five for this result.)

Now, suddenly, it was the New Year of 1843, and Aziraphale was arguing that if what he saw in the soonish future came to pass, Anne Lister would not remain a warrior of that middle-of-the-road Him. She would join Crowley’s Him, with a vengeance. Literally, she would burn the world down for vengeance.

At first, Crowley had joked, “Well, sure, but it could use a bit of a purge, don’t you think?”

But then Aziraphale had shared with him the holy vision he had been granted (and although the holy part meant Crowley had a three-day migraine afterwards, he was, eventually grateful. He quite liked this world and he didn’t want to see it utterly annihilated). 

The quick picture had showed him, in exquisite detail, a short-haired Anne Lister, wearing a military uniform he didn’t recognize (because, future, duh) ordering oblivion for the enemy and her own troops.

And he didn’t… think?... that in 1843 that was possible.

But.

He had been wrong before. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius had killed more than a thousand people and covered four cities with ash. Yeah, he hadn’t seen that one coming either. Usually, they got a heads-up, but not that time. It had made him cautious.

So he said, “Well, if you think this is one of those…” He rubbed his throbbing temples.

Aziraphale was adamant. “It is.”

“Then let’s go save the world.”

///

It was mid-January before Anne noticed the short monograph on women’s asylums in England, and it put her in a blue funk for days. She wrapped herself in a highland shawl and stayed in her room drinking endless cups of hot tea. Everyone noticed, but everyone left her alone. They all had bad times. One day, Anne threw off her shawl, threw on her greatcoat and boots and stomped out the front door and down the road, in the opposite direction from Goussainville. 

Andy and Booker had both been in the sitting room as she hurried out. One game of rock-paper-scissors later, and Booker had wrapped up warm and gone after her, not quickly, but quickly enough to keep her in sight. He had an idea where she was headed. The woods on the north side of the road led to a hill far enough away from people that one could, if one chose, make a great deal of noise there. He had only just stepped into the woods at the point she had left the road when he heard her roars.

He counted to thirty and then slowly made his way up the hill. At the top she was facing away from him and panting. He stepped on a twig and she whirled around. “What are you doing here?”

“I too sometimes come here. It is a very useful place.”

“That little book you bought. Why did you get it?”

“What book?”

“The monograph by some fellow named A. Glisser. On women’s asylums in England.”

Booker shook his head, surprised. “I’d remember buying something like that.”

“Well, if you didn’t and I didn’t…”

They both frowned, having a hard time imagining the other three reading such a book. Finally, Booker just shrugged. “So tell me, Anne Lister, what has you yelling into the wind today?”

“That book.” There was a long rock partially sticking out of the ground. She sat down with a sigh. “I was a bit wild when I was a girl. My father was wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Rebellion, so when he came home, he worked to recruit soldiers for the army. Well, that meant he was gone quite a lot. My mother couldn’t control me, so they sent me off to boarding school.” She smiled sadly. “My roommate was a girl called Eliza. My first love. We planned to run off and get married. But the school couldn’t control me either and they sent me home after a few years. As Eliza got older, her mind wasn’t the same. She suffered from fits of anxiety and dark moods.”

“She ended in an asylum?”

Anne nodded. “We discovered ourselves when we discovered each other, and it should have grown past that, but society is unkind and, as I have learned repeatedly, we are not all equally strong, in body or in mind. She helped me figure out what I was, and I could do nothing for her.”

Booker sat next to her. “Sometimes there is nothing we can do.”

“I think that my failure with Eliza is what made me so determined to help Ann, my wife, who suffers from similar ills.”

“She seemed in good health in the Ukraine.”

“Mm. We had some of the best weeks together since I’ve known her, so that’s what? Eight years? But I worry. The long journey back. Without me. I was her rock. I don’t trust her sister’s husband not to take advantage. And she isn’t close to my sister, who is the last of my family. Before we got together, her family coddled her, called her an invalid, but didn’t get her any real help. They wanted her wealth.” She sighed. “Well, so did I. And that also made me work harder to find her a good doctor, my friend Steph, a very solid medical man… And she has been mostly well these last six years. We all have dark times, of course. But not like before.”

“You can’t help her now. It doesn’t work. Once family figures out what you have—”

“Andy said I should ask you about your family.”

“I had three sons. My youngest son, Jean-Pierre, he was the last one to die… Cancer. He was forty-two when it started.” He shook his head. “The only way is forward now.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll always and forever be the woman right there, not old, not young, a few grey hairs, joints that ache from time to time. But everyone around you, everyone you love is gonna grow old, is gonna suffer and is gonna die. And if you try to… touch their lives… well, they will get to know your secret. They will beg you to share it with them, but you won’t be able to. And they won’t believe you, of course. And they will tell you that you don’t love them. That your love is weak… or selfish. And you will never forget the hate… and despair in their eyes. And you will know what it is to lose… everyone you have ever loved.”

Anne took in what he said, he could tell. But then she said, “There has to be a way to… look in on her? Intervene if her relatives try to…”

Booker looked off over the hills, thinking. Finally, he said, “This Steph. Would he recognize your handwriting?”

“Absolutely. We’ve written each other back and forth quite a bit over the years.”

“Hm. Well, I might have the beginnings of a plan, if the rest of the group agrees.”

“And if they don’t?” asked Anne.

“Don’t worry, Miss Lister. I can be very persuasive. I am French, no?”

And something passed across Anne’s vision, and she gave him a sad smile. “Oh, yes. The French can be very… persuasive.”

///

Andy stood at her window, not really knowing why, hoping or expecting Booker to bring Anne back, but also doubting herself, doubting Booker’s abilities, doubting Anne.

But they returned side by side and went to the kitchen, where Nicky and Joe were preparing beef bourguignon for dinner. Andy made her way down the stairs and joined them. She read the room instantly. Anne looked lost. Booker looked thoughtful. The boys looked curious.

Booker glanced at them knowing, as Andy did, that they all had an instinct for the moment. He cleared his throat. “I think we have to go to England, and probably Scotland as well. I think we have… a mission. Not a military one, or at least I hope not. A personal one.”

Nicky gestured for him to continue.

Anne said, “I am concerned about my wife.” She paused. “My widow. Her family are predatory. When we were together, I was able to protect her, to some extent, connected her with a medical man I trusted, who helped with her anxiety and doldrums. But I am worried. They have always wanted her money, her brother-in-law in particular.”

“What can we do?” asked Joe.

Booker sighed. “I have a few ideas toward a plan. We will all play our parts. But you might not like it…”

Andy and the others listened to Booker’s ideas. Andy shook her head. “The odds of all of that coming together…”

Nicky and Joe winked at each other. Nicky said, “The odds, I’d say, are a million to one against it…”

And Joe finished, “But it just might work.”


	8. A Million to One

They didn’t take the mission lightly or move quickly. They gathered the equipment they would need. Booker had an old friend on the Left Bank of Paris, an empresario of sorts who got them the costumes they would need to pull this off. The payment was a little bit of silver and a night with Nicky and Joe, and they were good to go.

Andy wasn’t happy about any of it. She thought the plan was crap and said so. But Anne disagreed.

“Andromache. Booker understands the times we live in—”

“Sure. I get that. The bit with the servants at your estate? Absolutely. The part with your letter to your medical man friend? Sure. But the bit with her brother-in-law? That is just never going to fly. He’s modern, like you. Like Booker. He’ll never be convinced.”

“Sorry, but there’s where you’re wrong. He only thinks he is a rationalist. But a true rationalist would realize that his wife needed her empowerment. He’s, well, an idiot. This shouldn’t work, I’ll grant you. But it will.” Anne paused. “I’ll bet you on it. If you like.”

Andy frowned. “How much?”

“Mm. Twenty pounds and a night in your bed if I’m right.”

Andy shook her head. “And if you’re wrong?”

Anne looked off to the clouds. “I don’t know. What do you want?”

Andy floundered, but only briefly. “Twenty pounds and a night in your bed.”

Anne grinned. “So, win or lose, neither one of us can possibly lose!”

///

Booker worked hard to put his plans in motion, contacting a banker in London, a doctor in York, and some thugs in Edinburgh.

Anne watched him writing his letters and volunteered to take them into town to the post office, because Andy had told her about the cute postmistress, and Anne Lister needed to do two things on a regular basis: walk very fast somewhere and flirt with pretty girls. 

At first Anne had seemed a bit surprised at Booker’s more elite connections and a bit distressed at “the more vulgar sort.” Booker just shrugged, telling her, “It’s like Andy always says. Sometimes you have to work with people you wouldn’t want to eat with.”

Eventually, they loaded up the carriage with a trunk of clothes, a trunk of weapons, and the other equipment, food, and Anne’s writing desk, which Andy had found in Paris for Anne’s birthday (much to her delight). Then they got on the road north to the Channel, taking turns driving the horses, Tick and Tock. The weather was reasonable and the roads no worse than ever, so they made good time to the ferry.

The sea was not particularly high, but Anne Lister had never been a particularly good sailor and threw up at least once a day until they reached England. The four of them shared a small cabin, and they all just ignored Anne always reaching for the chamber pot and vomiting when the rest of them had had their sea legs for centuries. At one point, Andy left the cabin and when she came back, she had a small package wrapped in her handkerchief. From it she took out a ginger root and sat there with her pocketknife pealing part of it.

She handed the piece to Anne and said, “Chew.”

Willing to try anything, Anne obeyed. An hour later she said, tentatively, “I feel… somewhat less miserable.”

“Considering how bad you were when we crossed the channel the last time, I should have remembered and brought supplies along, but it’s been years since that bothered me, and I forgot.”

And of course, when Andy said years, she probably meant centuries, so who could blame her?

They reached London a few days later and picked up a few more bits and pieces. They drove up to Halifax. Then Nicky and Joe dropped off Andy, Booker and Anne and headed further north.

///

When they got off the carriage in Halifax, Anne said, “One of you two will have to book the inn. There are still people here who might recognize me.”

Booker solved that problem by getting them a room in Staffordshire Arms, a run-down little inn on the edge of town. Then he got busy. He handed Anne some stationery paper and a large piece of foolscap. “I know you’ve been working on the letter all week. When you finalize the wording, write it to your friend formally on this. But in the meantime, I need a detailed map of your house, all the floors, and where the different servants work, and their names. Include everything, the barn and all.”

He turned to Andy, “Work on your Russian accent.”

“Zachem?”

“Because you won’t be speaking Russian. You’ll be speaking English with a Russian accent. Muscovite, preferably. You have friends at the English Consulate who introduced you to Anne Lister back in, what? February?”

Anne shook her head. “January. Say we met at the New Year’s ball, became quite friendly, had mutual acquaintances in York.”

“And she asked you to pass on a letter,” said Booker.

“And this is going to your friend, Steph?” Andy asked. 

“Steph Belcombe, yes. Dr. Belcombe of York, an old friend, who has treated Ann in the past for her anxiety and melancholia. He’s well respected. If she needs help, he’s pretty much the only one left I can think of who might be able to step in.”

Andy squeezed Anne’s shoulder, shaking her head. “This has got to be one of the craziest things we’ve done in years.”

Booker grinned. “Crazier than Oslo?”

She see-sawed her hand back and forth.

Booker’s grin broadened. “Crazier than Sao Paolo?”

“This part, no. At least with this part, there’ll be no broken glass. But the Scottish part of your plan?”

“The play’s the thing,” said Booker.

///

Elizabeth Cordingly was worried about Miss Walker. The woman had always been a bit delicate, but since she returned with the terrible news of Miss Lister’s death abroad, the whole household had been darker, quieter. Anne Lister had been a force to be reckoned with, intelligent, energetic, always doing the unexpected thing. Cordingly had traveled with her through Europe long ago, until she broke her leg and couldn’t keep up. Now the whole house moved at a slower pace. It was really just her and the other servants. The land steward, Samuel Washington, came over from time to time on business, and on those days, Miss Walker was a trifle brighter. On other days, her cousins the Rawsons would come over and try to get her to move out of Shibden, but the memories of her years with Anne Lister were too strong and she needed that connection so much. So she stayed.

Cordingly had the help of John Booth, around the house and barns, and his younger brother James, the butler. But mainly it was just Miss Walker and Cordingly getting on with things. Cordingly also missed Anne Lister. She hadn’t been the easiest person to work for, but she had been fair, and life had always held the possibility of excitement.  
Now, not so much.

Cordingly was cleaning a rabbit that John had trapped when there was a knock on the scullery door. “James!”

“That one is never around when you need him,” she muttered wiping her bloody hands on her apron and hurrying to the door.

On the doorstep stood a roughly good-looking man in well-worn clothes. He carried a heavy backpack. “’Ello, Madame. I am a cutler. Do you have any blades you need sharpened?”

“Oh, but yes! I was just struggling with my dull knives. Come on in, Monseiur!”

And then Cordingly had a lovely afternoon chatting in French with the man, who then sharpened every blade in the house. Cordingly wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, but even she could enjoy a few hours of flirtation with a bit of gossip on the side.

///

Andy took the stagecoach from Halifax to York, with Anne’s letter tucked into her suit pocket. The weather was cloudy and chill, and the coach was fairly full, so she ended up on the front with the driver, but that gave her some time to practice speaking English with her best Russian accent. She regaled the driver with tales of Moscow, descriptions of the architecture, the maddeningly bad roads, the glories of the court.

She arrived in York and got directions from a local that enabled her to walk quickly to Dr. Belcombe’s surgery. After she had waited a quarter hour, the doctor emerged, said goodbye to his patient, a gouty old man, and turned to Andy.

“What can I do for you, sir?” He took in Andy’s best suit and polished shoes.

“You are Dr. Belcombe, I hope?” she said holding out her hand.

He shook it. “I am. But I’m not taking any new patients, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, no. You misunderstand. I am Andrei Skayavich, of Moscow. I made the acquaintance of one of your friends in Moscow a bit more than two years ago. I should have gotten here sooner to give it to you, but I was called down to Georgia to serve there and couldn’t get to Europe any sooner.”

“Which friend?”

“A Miss Anne Lister. Quite an amazing woman! We met at the New Year’s Ball, and she surprised me with her erudition and the wide range of her interests. She was a trifle anxious about her travels and wanted me to pass on a letter about her friend’s health, but I was distracted and didn’t think much of it. I recently ran into a friend from the British consulate and he let me know of her very tragic passing.”

“It was a loss to all of us who counted her a friend.”

Andy handed him the letter.

The doctor took it and rubbed his thumb over its address to himself, sighing. “A very great loss.”

He opened the letter and read silently. Andy knew what it said, as she had helped Anne write it.

“1/2/1840. Dearest Steph. Moscow is bitter cold. Saw Lord Strathclyde briefly at the embassy and he sends you his best. There has been word of a fever illness here in the capitol, so we are soon off south to see the Ukraine and, if possible, push further south into Persia. The locals aren’t sanguine about our chances, but you know me when I put my mind to something.”

Steph grunted and continued to read.

“Still, I must ask a favor. For the most part, Ann has been well. You were quite right about the benefits of travel. However, nothing in this life is ever truly safe or certain. I beg you, Steph, if anything should happen to me, now or in future, for the sake of our long friendship, do look out for Ann and her health. You know about her relations, how little they care for her well-being, aside from her purse. She will not, I think, ask for your help herself, so you must look in on her.”

“Indeed,” he murmured.

“God oversees all. It may be that I will return to the kingdom, visit you there in York, and regale you with a thousand and one tales from Persia. In any case, give my regards to M and stay well yourself. I remain yr obdt servant, Anne Lister.”

Andy said softly, “She seemed a rationalist, and was quite distressed at finding herself thinking of the worst, called it superstitious. I am sorry that I did not take her concerns seriously, deeply sorry.” She gave a small bow.

Belcombe frowned, folding the letter. “No one who knew Miss Lister for even the slightest amount of time would think her superstitious. She firmly entwined science and her faith in God… I’m grateful to you, Mr. Skayavich, for coming all this way. I will see to it that I look in on her friend.”

“Then my mission here is done.” They shook hands again and said their farewells.

Out in the street, Andy looked at Anne’s pocketwatch. She still had time for pie and a pint before she needed to get back for the stagecoach’s return journey.


	9. Final Touches for an Intervention

Sebastien Le Livre had always had a way with women, a way based on his understanding that women liked to talk, and they really liked to talk to him. He got them to talk about their lives, their families, the people they worked for. He told tales of the places he had traveled in his wanderings as an itinerant knife grinder. Back in Halifax, he had mostly listened while Mme. Cordingly talked. At the house in Inverness, he also told tales of how the cholera was moving south, from Balloch a few weeks before, to Culloden, to Smithton, and most recently to Cradlehall and Westhill. 

“And they say it takes the children fast, within mere days. Why, one family I heard of started out with six sons and a daughter, and within a week, only the daughter was left, for she was the oldest and strongest.”

He made a pretty penny sharpening all their knives and shears, and then spent a few days watching the house from a hill a quarter mile away. The mother had packed up her five children, her governess and her lady’s maid and high-tailed it off west toward Edinburgh. Excellent. The other servants didn’t stay overnight, so it would just be the husband in the house during the hours of darkness.

///

Bert McTavish hadn’t always been a complete and total bastard. As a child he’d been small and quiet, but his father had knocked the quietness out of him and the friends he’d been drawn to had been the kind of large knuckle-draggers who could protect him. They had also taught him to fight.

The summer he’d turned fifteen, he grew nine inches in height and weighed about thirteen stone. That fall, when his father came after him, he’d kicked him in the stomach and knocked him on his ass. That was when his father invited him into the family business. Pa and his brothers, Uncle Ned and Uncle Davy, called themselves traders, and it was mostly true. The fact that they didn’t exactly own the merchandise they traded, and that they didn’t exactly pay the exchequer anything at all, were just pesky details.

And when anybody took exception to their activities, those people were dealt with rather permanently. That was the job that Bert learned to do, and do well, and even enjoy. And a fellow could get a reputation in certain circles. Nobs who knew where to find rough and tumble fellows like him would have a wee chat in the dark corners of a cheap Edinburgh pub. Money would change hands, half before and half after.

And normally Bert had Standards. No bairns. No lassies. 

But this lass was English, and that was a different matter altogether.

///

In the end, it was decided that it would be Nicky who procured the pig blood from the butcher in Inverness and soaked the theatrical Crusader costume with it. Joe swore that he was fine with doing it himself, but Nicky insisted. Booker didn’t know too much about Islam, but Nicky had seen the flaw in his plan right away and had stepped in to fix it. That left Joe the task of finding the glazier and getting the red and yellow glass they would need for the other effects. By the time that Andy and Anne finally joined them in Scotland, they had all the equipment they needed, now including the last two bodies to pull it off.

Anne was amazed at the pair of portable blocks and tackles that they had built, but she was even more impressed by their costumes. “Are they accurate?” she asked, examining the chain shirt that would go under the bloodied white surcoat with its huge red cross.

Nicky shrugged. “Mine’s close. Joe’s, not so much. Today’s theater people wouldn’t know a Saracen if he bit them on the ankle. But we figure that Sutherland won’t either, especially with the other little genius bit of Booker’s plan.”

“What’s that?” asked Anne.

Booker smiled. “A small nightcap.”

///

Captain George Mackay Sutherland had never been an abstemious man, but one of the few concessions he had made to his wife after he had broken his oldest son’s wrist in a drunken rage was that he should drink less around the children. She had even gone over his head to his mother to make sure it happened.

So, when they were, as now, visiting with his mother and he was alone in the house of an evening, he would pour himself a generous glass of whiskey and sit by the fire, reading.

That night, he poured out the scotch, and then heard what sounded like a loose shutter banging in the wind at the back of the house. He swore. He had instructed his footman to secure them since the nights had been windy of late. Typical. He marched outside and found the shutters at the scullery window were unlatched and banging back and forth in the wind. They were just a little too high for him to reach, so he dragged a barrel under the window and climbed up and secured them himself. Then he jumped down, moved the barrel back to its place and went back inside. Wiping his hands off on his handkerchief, he reached for his glass—had he really filled it that full?—and took a good long pull.

It tasted a bit odd, but then his cook had overused the pepper in his dinner that night, so that was probably what was throwing him off. Typical. He sat in front of the fire drinking as he read the day’s paper, and only dragged himself up to bed when he found himself nodding off.

///

Before the sun had set, Booker had sat them all down and gone over the plan one more time. For Andy and Anne, it was the first time hearing the finishing details.

Andy frowned. “It seems a little extreme.”

Booker shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve known Davy McTavish since before my soldier days, back when I was still counterfeiting. He’s got no morals to speak of and he talks when he’s drunk. If he says Ann Walker is going to take a header out of an open carriage over the rockiest bridge in Halifax, it is a plan.”

“But murder!” said Anne. “If you’d told me he was going to swindle her out of the estate, or even try to put her in an asylum, I’d have believed it of him. But hired killers? That’s just…”

Andy rubbed her back. They both wore nondescript mousy brown clothes to better blend in once night fell. “Anne, I’m… old. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“But he’s met Ann.”

Andy didn’t try to explain the viciousness of human nature to Anne Lister. If she didn’t know yet, she’d find out eventually. In a way, her innocence was sweet. The boys went into the woods and changed. Then Anne and Andy helped tie the hooks to the backs of their belts and threaded the rope up under their clothes. Joe gave Nicky a look of fond nostalgia.

“We’re fighting the good fight again, Habibi.” He gestured at his somewhat cartoonish Saracen costume and Nicky’s crusader costume.

Booker was the only one not wearing a familiar look. He wore black hose and a black shirt, belted. Sewn onto it were flames in blood red and sickly gold, and he wore a wooden mask of black and sickly green with a demon’s face and horns. He had already applied sulphur to the torch he carried. The Sutherland house was going to stink for days.


	10. The Visitation

In his dreams, rain poured down and thunder rumbled. Lightning cracked. Part of him thought the window was open, but another part dreamed of Hell’s fires roaring up around him. A demon was cackling, and everything was tinged a bloody red.

Suddenly, before him stood a Saracen in a turban-wrapped helmet and a muddy robe over rusted armor. His grin was all teeth and his curved sword glinted in the red light. He turned sharply away from Sutherland and stabbed his sword into someone who stood behind him and the man, a crusader with Saint George’s red cross on his bloody white surcoat, screamed.

“God will make you pay, Pagan!” yelled the Crusader.

“You were running away, cowardly Infidel!”

The demon roared. “You will both spend eternity with me in the inferno of my dominion! You, the coward, who abandoned your fellow soldiers! And you, the godless heathen who slaughtered a soldier of the Lord! But you are not the worst sinner! There is another who will writhe in my flames! Come, look upon the future! See what miserable villainy I will cause when your bones are dust!”

And he stretched his sickly arm out toward Sutherland.

The Crusader and the Saracen both screamed, their faces pictures of abject horror.

“Look upon the killer of an innocent woman, who thinks him her friend! Look upon a soldier not man enough to make his own kill, but who implicates other souls to do his devilish work! Look upon me, his sovereign, who will put his soul through a million glorious tortures: the fiery inferno and the red-hot rack, to grill him like the palid fish he is!”

And then the demon laughed a terrible laugh, darted to the bed and pulled out the chamber pot and doused his torch in its liquid. The room went dark and silent.

Sutherland shook in his bed and eventually fell back into a feverish sleep. When he woke the next morning, his room smelled like sulphur. And his chamber pot was a mess. But at least that wasn’t an immediate problem because at some point in the night, Sutherland had emptied his bladder into his bedding.

///

Back in their camp, the Old Guard stripped out of their costumes and packed them in the trunk, except for the bloody surcoat which they planned to bury somewhere far from Inverness.

The boys described the scene to Andy and Anne, who had been outside on the ground in charge of the block and tackle to get them into the upper bedroom and lower them down afterwards.

Andy stopped trying to fold Nicky’s chain shirt because she was laughing too hard. “Palid… fish? Seriously?”

“I thought we had come up with a better line,” said Nicky.

“Hey, I couldn’t remember it and I was caught up in the moment.”

Anne said, “I’m beginning to think I really want to hear about Oslo and Sao Paolo.”

///

Bert McTavish was in the pub when the nob walked in, bought him a pint and told him the deal was off, but he could keep the first half. He looked ten years older, and pale, like he’d seen a ghost.

“Seriously, mate. I’ll do the job. Did somebody tell ‘e I weren’t good? I’m as good as they come.”

“No, it’s, someone, and they’ll connect me. Compromised. Yes, that’s it. Can’t afford for that. Not. No.”

“All right, mate. If you says so.” Bert shook his head. At least that meant he wouldn’t have to go to England. He didn’t mind travel, but the English got right up his arse.

///

The Old Guard traveled south, back to Halifax and took turns keep watch over Shibden Hall. At one point, Booker was in town and ran into Mrs. Cordingly, who seemed worried and he got her talking. She was concerned about her mistress who had been unwell, and her brother-in-law who was insisting on coming down to help. Clearly, she was unconvinced that the man could or would actually help.

At one point they saw Dr. Belcombe visit Shibden.

And then came the day when they saw Sutherland’s carriage on the road from Halifax. Anne grabbed her pistols and her sword and hurried down the hill to her estate before anybody realized what she was going to do, and none of them could keep up with her.

To be fair, Andy thought as she ran, this woman looked nothing like the woman she had met near the Black Sea. She was dressed like a man, with short hair and tanned skin. She had gained muscle in the two plus years she had been with them. And she flew downhill with her black greatcoat trailing in the wind behind her, making her look like an avenging angel.

///

Nicky had the longest legs and quickly outpaced the rest of the Old Guard, coming up behind Anne as she burst through the front door of Shibden, hurried down the dark wooden hallway, through the sitting room and up the stairs. Nicky caught a glimpse of a woman in a bonnet, gaping like she’d seen a ghost—and, of course, she really had—as he followed Anne up the stairs. At the top, he saw Anne facing off with George Sutherland and another man, older, well-dressed, and mostly bald. In her black suit, Anne looked every inch the aristocratic gentleman, but her face was fierce with anger. Everyone was yelling, the two men in English and Anne in, wait, what? German?

Another young man was climbing the stairs in a hurry with a bag of tools. 

Sutherland yelled to him, “Take the hinges off!”

Anne yelled, “Das ist nicht nötig!”

“If she’s a danger to herself—” yelled the other man.

“Why would she shut herself in if she’s not—” yelled Sutherland.

“Weil du dich gemobbt hast!”

The young man knelt at the door, but Anne dragged his tool bag away from him. He grabbed her, but she flipped him and put him in a headlock.

“Who is this fellow?” asked Sutherland.

The older man, pale, stammered, “Miss Lister? But you are dead. And a woman—”

Nicky stepped forward and knocked him out with a soft blow, catching him as he fell, and laying him on the floor. Sutherland turned and stared. “I’ve seen you—”

Anne’s sword was out, and Sutherland saw the blade coming for him. Nicky had a split second to think what to do and he dove between them. So great was her fury that Anne’ sword went right through Nicky and into Sutherland’s hand, pinning them both to the wall. There was blood everywhere. Nicky’s head snapped back against Sutherland’s and the man was knocked out.

When Nicky returned from wherever it was that they went when they were between one life and the next, he had the strangest feeling that he had spent the… time?... in a bookstore? With a dapper bookseller, a viper in human form, and another… person?... whose visage disappeared the more Nicky tried to focus on him.

There may also have been a rat sitting on the desk, wearing a little hooded black robe and holding a little scythe whose blade twinkled in the lamplight and threated to peel Nicky’s eyelids off if he focused on it too long. And that made no kind of sense.

Cordingly was running up the stairs with a carving knife, but Anne flipped it out of her hand with the tip of her sword and yelled to her, “Rapidement! Obtenez quelque chose pour éponger le sang! Il est blessé! Se dépêcher!”

Nicky groaned and saw Anne pull him off of Sutherland, tear off her cravat and tie up the man’s side. Then she pulled a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked the door.

Slowly, Nicky pulled himself up to standing. “Was that really necessary?”

She ignored him, pulling the door open. “The red room,” she said.

Ann sat on the floor, hugging one of Anne’s old journals to her chest and rocking back and forth. She looked up at Anne and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, Anne. It’s you. We were just about to sit down for tea. I have your journal. It’s a great comfort to me. Is it nice where you are, in paradise?”

Anne took a step back, staring, then muttered, “Ah, yes. Quite nice, thank you.”

Ann nodded and kept rocking. Anne backed out of the room. To Nicky she said, “Go, before he wakes up and recognizes you. I need to think what to do…”

And Sutherland was groaning, so Nicky bolted down the stairs, passing Cordingly in the dining room, her hands full of rags and towels. He hurried out of the scullery into the yard to see Joe and Andy just about to enter. “She killed me, boss,” said Nicky. “She’s out of control.”

Andy frowned, then the scullery door opened, and Anne came out, sheathing her sword. “There is nothing for us here. I have warned him. That’s all I can do.” And she turned her back on her ancestral home and walked back the way they had come, where their horses waited for them.

Andy shrugged and gestured for the boys to follow her. It wasn’t the outcome they had hoped for, but it was what they had to settle for.


	11. Post-Credits Scene

Three months later, Sutherland had business in London. The bandage had come off his left hand weeks before, but the scar was still an angry red and still pained him. He sat in a coffee house rereading the letters from his solicitor and from Dr. Belcombe. The asylum had agreed to take his wife’s sister, so that was something. The Shibden estate was still up in the air, but the lawyer was optimistic, so that was something else.

The coffee house was bustling and young man in his thirties wearing a slightly worn suit said, “Mind if I join you? This is the last empty chair.”

Sutherland gestured and then rubbed his scarred hand.

“Ouch, that looks bad. War wound? You look to me a military man.”

Sutherland said, “No and yes. I was a soldier, but this… You’d not believe me if I told you.”

The man chuckled. “I’m a writer. Tell me a tall tale.”

“Would you believe that I was visited by an angel, a demon and a… something in between? As a… warning to reevaluate my life choices.”

“So this was a dream you had?”

“Ah, yes, yes. Of course. A dream.”

“And your hand?”

“Oh, I, uh. When I woke, I was shaking from fright and I went to have a glass of whiskey to calm me, and I… accidentally crushed it in my hand. A writer, you say. Have I read anything you’ve written?”

“Nicholas Nickleby?”

“Mm. Can’t say I’ve heard of it.” Sutherland finished his coffee and rose. He had no time for poor novelists.

But as he pushed his way through the warm crowd, he felt a chill go through him. The dream in Scotland had unsettled him, but then that German fellow at Shibden who set the tip of his strange Oriental sword against his throat and muttered in English that he knew about the Scottish thugs, and the bridge and the plan. That if anything happened to Ann Walker, if she so much as stubbed a toe, he would know and return and finish the job he had started. And Sutherland felt a drop of his own blood slide down his throat and under his collar and cravat. And he had looked behind the terrifying man and thought he’d seen…

Well, if he weren’t losing his mind as much as his wife’s sister was, it almost looked like a vision of heaven and hell, a bright being with white wings and something distinctly dark, with fiery red eyes.

The German had used his forefinger to wipe the blood off his blade and smeared it on Sutherland’s forehead. “Do you understand? You are marked. I will find you.” Then he had turned and walked away.

Sutherland stumbled on a cobblestone remembering the moment. The cold summer rain blew in his face. The lawyer and the lady’s maid and he had put together a story. It didn’t make sense, any of it, not the amount of blood from such a small wound, not the pistol in Ann’s chamber, not Ann talking very calmly about speaking to Anne Lister’s ghost. He would get Shibden Hall, that much was clear.

But he would not sleep a single night through without nightmares, not once for the rest of his life.

Finis.


End file.
